The only thing I hate more than sonnets is Shakespearean sonnets. Iambic pentameter is the worst meter. Fight me.

“What would’a happened, d’you think, if you hadn’t’a gotten out of Todd’s car?” My spoon clinks against the metal bowl when I drop it. I pick up my glass again just to give my fingers something to do.

“I don’t know. I’d be at the party, I guess.” She takes a bite of ice cream, sucking gently on the end of the spoon to get the last little bit clean. “I’d have a red Solo cup full of mystery punch and the music would be too loud – we’re not in college any more, darn it – and Todd would keep trying to pull my skirt up cause it’s funny. Do you think that’s funny?”

She looks like she’s genuinely trying to figure it out. My eyes involuntarily drop to the hem of her skirt, where it’s riding up. I drag them away and look her in the face.

“Funny? No.” Not that I don’t want to do it myself, slide my hand up between the fabric and her skin. But not to be funny, no.

“Because, you know… people laugh,” she goes on, taking tiny sips of sherry like a hummingbird, poised delicately on the edge of her stool, her knee perilously close to mine. “And so I laugh, too. Only sometimes I wonder if it’s the right thing.”

A cubit is the length of a forearm from hand to elbow.
The distance of your outstretched arm from fingers to nose is about a yard.
One stride taken on two feet measures approximately three feet.
Why, then, is there no word for the distance between your heart and mine?